I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for reporting information in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
A wireless multiple-access communication system can concurrently support communication for multiple terminals on the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations.
The terminals may be located throughout the system and may observe different channel conditions. Furthermore, these terminals may have different data requirements and/or capabilities. The terminals may report various types of information in order to obtain adequate service from the system and to ensure proper system operation. For example, a terminal may estimate the channel quality of the downlink for a base station and may send a channel quality report on the uplink to the base station. The base station may use the channel quality report to assign radio resources to the terminal and/or to select a suitable data rate for transmission on the downlink to the terminal.
The information reported by the terminals, although pertinent or important, represents overhead in the system. Hence, it is desirable to send the information as efficiently as possible so that more of the available radio resources can be used to send data. There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to efficiently report information in a wireless communication system.